Here it is, the culmination of all this Halloween hysteria! If I’ve learnt anything putting this podcast together, it’s that though most people don’t really believe in ghosts, everyone has some sort of story or spooky experience. At least the people I talked to. I’m a non-believer myself, but we discuss two things that happened to me that creeped me out and I can’t fully explain. Ghosts? You decide. On top of that, there’s another four real life stories, and the apparition at Jim Connolly’s recent wedding reception may be my favourite ghost story ever. Plus some geeky waffle about films, Halloween, and rabid Foxes.
I’ve included all the other stuff that this podcast used to contain: vintage music, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and all the usual contributors. It’s a faithful re-creation of something I put out monthly for about two and a half years before I ran out of steam in 2009. I don’t do it anymore – haven’t the time – and this is not some sort of relaunch. It’s a one-off. The Halloween specials were always the most fun and I think this new episode captures all that pretty well. It’s an odd, unpolished mix, and an even odder climax to the countdown, but there we are. It’s also a little longer than usual with a 1 hour and 6 minutes running time. Believe me, I chopped a lot out.
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Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed or contributed to any part of this month-long series of posts. It’s had an amazing response and thanks to Roomyverse for letting me do it.
Cheers
Head Chef
We’ve had two more stories submitted, but too late for the podcast. So, I thought I’d post it here. This one’s from my sister…
A real ghost story or too much peanut butter?
When I was about nine I saw the next door neighbour Betty’s father standing half way down our stairs. Nothing that unusual except that he had just died on holiday in Spain. I clearly remember seeing him standing smiling at me, he nodded and disappeared. I don’t remember being scared or disturbed, he was friendly and even though I knew he had died the day before it felt very normal to see him and anyway there was an explanation. My mother told me I’d ‘been eating too many peanut butter sandwiches’ and quickly added ‘..don’t say anything to Betty’
Another ‘ghostly’ experience happened many years later. My husband David had been out but was now asleep next to me, I had been asleep but something woke me. The room was dark and a couple of feet away in the doorway I could see the back of a tall man, he appeared to be looking down inspecting the dressing table top. I wasn’t spooked, because it was so real my first thought was that David had invited some pissed up mate back from the pub to stay in the spare room and the cheeky sod was wandering round the house. I sat up and shook David’s shoulder, ‘who the hell is it?’ but in that split second the atmosphere in the room changed, I went from being annoyed to a gripped breath holding level of scared. The shape of the figure became more defined as it started to turn its head slowly towards me, my panic then came from a sudden sense that I must not see the face. I reached for the bed side lamp, switched it on, and the figure was gone. Nobody else was in the house, hadn’t had peanut butter and I didn’t think Betty would be interested, but it freaked me out and I slept with the light on for the next few weeks.